


Everyday Love

by Paganpunk2



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: 1960s, All better now, Breakfast, Dancing, Estate Manager Sid, Future Fic, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Morning Cuddles, Past Break-Up and Reunion, Past Injury, Period-Typical Homophobia, Presents, Private Investigator Sullivan, Pure Saccharine, Sweet, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, past angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29400870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paganpunk2/pseuds/Paganpunk2
Summary: Every day is a perfect day when you spend it with the person you love.  Valentine's Day is just an excuse to be a little sappier about it than usual.
Relationships: Sid Carter/Inspector Sullivan
Kudos: 17





	Everyday Love

_Sunday, 14 February 1965_

Sid was already up and, if the sounds rising through the heat vent beside the bed were any indication, hard at work on their typical Sunday morning Full English. Sullivan stretched, flinched as something – he'd heard the anatomical name for what ailed him a thousand times now, but he still couldn’t remember it – caught in his left knee, then scrubbed a hand over his face. He was smiling. He’d woken up smiling almost every morning for the past two years, and he had yet to become tired of the sensation.

A quick shower, because they’d tried something new last night and it had been messier than usual, and then he pulled his dressing gown around himself and limped down the stairs and into the kitchen. He loved this space, with its ash-paneled walls, pale green appliances, and wide, bright windows. The police cottage had been nice, but the estate manager’s lodge at Montague House put it to shame.

Not that it was any bigger – save for the single extra downstairs room that Sullivan used as a study, it wasn’t - but it was more isolated, safer. In the village they wouldn’t have dared to be inside together for more than a few minutes without ensuring that every shutter and curtain was closed. Here, tucked away in a dense grove that made them accessible only via their gated drive or the narrow footpath that ran straight to the House, they could let the sunlight in.

The sunlight had been dim and gray of late, as was standard for February. This morning, though, it fell across the stove in a slant of dappled gold. Most of it soaked into the heavy cast iron pan that contained their breakfast, but the edges of the beam caught Sid’s hands as he worked. The younger man hadn’t noticed that he was no longer alone, and Sullivan leaned against the door frame to secretly watch him as he swayed along with the music from the transistor radio.

He was wearing his Valentine’s Day present, a warm, soft flannel shirt from one of the fancy outdoor outfitters that young nobles went to when they felt the urge to imitate Sir Edmund Hillary on their next holiday. Sullivan had actually splurged and bought him two different colors, but this one brought out Sid’s eyes and was always bound to be his favorite of the pair. The faded and gently fraying apron that protected his clothes against the occasional splatter from the pan had been a housewarming gift from Mrs. McCarthy. It clashed dreadfully, and it did nothing for the skin that was bare below his rolled-up sleeves, but he never cooked without it.

Sullivan winced as a hot droplet hit the inside of his partner’s wrist and drew a little hiss of pain from him. They had a perfectly good grease screen, but Sid refused to use it. It was, he claimed, “too hard to keep clean enough for Mrs. M.’s standards.” This was a reasonable enough concern, since the parish secretary stopped by every few days, often when they weren’t home, to drop off fresh baked goods and (Sullivan strongly suspected) check on their household hygiene standards and the freshness of the milk in the fridge.

It was funny how little some things had changed. Lady Felicia continued to hold court at the House, given free rein over the place by the adoring nephew-in-law who had recently inherited Monty’s title. Mrs. McCarthy's pace had fallen off a bit, but she retained the energy to bob along in Father Brown’s spirited wake and poke about in other people’s cupboards. The Father himself ministered as vigorously as ever to Kembleford, hustling from homilies to homicides without missing a step even though he was fast approaching seventy. And Sid was still just as alluring as he had been the first time Sullivan had laid eyes on him over a decade earlier.

That wasn’t to say that nothing was different, of course. Five Inspectors had come and gone since Sullivan’s departure from the position. Sergeant Goodfellow had finally taken a well-deserved retirement, and half the constables had moved on to other things, too. Everyone had aged, some more gracefully than others. Sullivan felt he’d gotten the short end of that particular stick, though Sid – ever boyish, and therefore unfit to judge in Sullivan’s opinion – refused to hear it and alleged that he let his bad knee make him feel older than his forty-two years.

The knee itself was another difference, a souvenir of a car chase gone wrong. He could have stayed in the Special Branch afterward, and had a promotion to boot. But it would have been desk work, the supervision of men whose bodies hadn’t yet been broken by the demands of their profession. By the time the heavy painkillers had cleared out of his head enough for him to start thinking seriously about his future, Sullivan had wanted nothing more than to go back. Back to the field, from which his superiors had barred him; back to Kembleford, where he no longer had a position or a home; back to Sid, who would have been completely justified in telling him to go to hell.

It hadn’t been a pretty break-up. They had only been together for a short while, just one hundred and eighty-four days by Sullivan’s count. But those six dangerous, whirlwind months had been the most intense of his life, and he’d made the decision not to take the Special Branch position after he told Sid about the offer and saw his expression. The post was in London, a place that they both knew it would do Sid no good to go back to on anything like a permanent basis. Besides, by then Sullivan had grown to like Kembleford, to appreciate its relative tranquility, its familiar faces, and even its meddling priest. It was somewhere he would be content to stay, especially with Sid at his side.

Then, before he could officially refuse, his father called. The elder Sullivan had heard about the job prospect through some connection of his own and wanted to offer congratulations. For the first time in his adult life – no, in his whole life, in his entire memory – Sullivan had detected a note of pride in his father’s voice.

It had half-killed him to tell Sid that he’d changed his mind, to reduce him to angry, heartbroken tears. In the end, though, the riptide of filial duty swept Sullivan away.

Not a day had gone by since that hadn’t found him ruing that stupid moment of weakness. It had been hard enough just to miss the other man in the cold, lonely hours when there was no work to serve as a distraction. After his injury, though, when he’d risked reaching back out to the people he’d left behind and learned what had happened in his absence, he’d faced a real crisis of conscience.

Every terrible thing that Sid had gone through since he’d left – every solitary night in the caravan or on the road, every unjust day in prison – was, Sullivan convinced himself, his fault. If he had stayed, he could have saved Sid from all of it. They could have been happy together instead of being sad alone. The guilt was enough to drive any man, even one as measured and stable as he was, into the bottom of a bottle.

His sacrifice hadn’t even been worthwhile. The pride had fallen out of his father’s voice as quickly as it had come into it, suffocated now by the lack of a daughter-in-law and grandchildren rather than by the old sense of unfulfilled career expectations. He could never be enough for the old man, Sullivan had finally realized on his drunkest, blackest night. But Sid loved him as he was. Or he had loved him, until Sullivan had walked away.

Thanks to what his doctors agreed was more or less a medical miracle, he could still walk after the botched car chase. Sullivan didn’t generally believe in miracles, or signs, or anything like that. When he woke up on the floor of his flat the morning after his last bender, however, he recognized the significance of his stiff but functional leg. It was battered and patched and painful, but it was good enough to get him home.

He’d already known that Lady Felicia had returned from Rhodesia a few months before. He’d known, too, that she’d come back with the idea of hiring an estate manager. The Earl would continue to monitor his stocks and other City investments personally, but his ancestral farms and fields and forests in Gloucestershire could be better overseen by someone who actually cared to spend time in them. The Countess was in charge of finding such a person, and she would have no one except Sid.

But Sid was reluctant to accept the role. He was still wandering, unsettled, unhappy despite the bright face he put on for everyone. He visited the village often, but he never stayed for more than a week or two at a time. And, as he’d argued when the topic came up, he didn’t know the first thing about surveying or increasing yields or market prices. He didn’t want to mess it up, especially seeing as how the land and the money was Lady Felicia’s. It had taken heavy pressure from Father Brown just to convince him to linger through the winter of ‘62-‘63 and use the skills he _was_ confident about to fix up the old gamekeeper’s house to Her Ladyship’s specifications.

And thank God for Father Brown’s influence, not just because Sid’s season-long layover allowed Sullivan to find him but because that winter was the worst one of the century. More than a few rough sleepers froze to death, and there was no reason to think that Sid mightn’t have been among them had he been out rambling as per his wont. By the time the weather came down on Boxing Day, however, Sullivan had been back in his bed for three weeks. It might have been the coldest winter since 1895, but all either of them remembered was rekindled heat.

Since then, bliss. The morning after their tearful reunion, Sullivan had called in and informed his Commissioner that he’d decided to take an early retirement. His pension wasn’t generous by any means, but he’d had a plan. By the time the last of the snow finally melted away, he and Lady Felicia had succeeded in cajoling Sid into accepting the estate manager position on a trial basis. Only then did the Countess reveal that the renovated gamekeeper’s house came with the job, along with a higher salary than what Sullivan had once earned as the head of Kembleford’s constabulary.

Sid had promptly passed out, scaring Lady Felicia half to death and forcing Sullivan to delay his own announcement for a few days to make sure the dead faint wouldn’t be repeated. As it turned out, waiting probably hadn’t been necessary, because the idea of the former Inspector getting a private investigator’s license had tickled Sid absolutely pink.

“I c’n see it already,” he’d giggled from where he’d been sprawled over their new sofa. “You and the Father both sticking your noses into ‘police business.’ You used to hate that so much – bloody hell, you _arrested_ him for it – and now look at you, being just as bad as the rest of us. ‘M so proud.”

However proud Sid might have been on the day when Sullivan opened his little two-room office in the village, it was nothing compared to what Sullivan felt about Sid’s own achievements. The younger man’s familiarity with the countryside and the people who worked it, along with his eager willingness to listen and learn in order to do the best by his employer that he could, made him a natural at managing the estate’s resources. There were still moments when his lack of a formal education created hurdles, but Sid’s inborn charm and the years of schmoozing practice he’d had at Lady Felicia’s teas were usually enough to overcome them.

Next year, he’d whispered into the darkness just the other night, the estate’s profits would likely go up for the first time in ages. And Sullivan knew that Sid was achieving that growth without ripping the heart out of the land. The forests were marked for thoughtful extractions rather than clear-cutting; modern technology, local partnerships, and a shift towards niche products were making the farms and the fields more lucrative without requiring the layoff of a single soul. Before long, in fact, a couple of his projects were going to have to hire in additional people. It was more than many estate managers with fancy degrees were able to pull off, as the Countess regularly bragged both in and out of Sid’s hearing.

Most importantly, he was happy, happy to be caught up in the turn of the seasons, happy to have something different to do from day to day. Sullivan was happy, too, not just because Sid was but for his own reasons. Much of the investigatory work that came his way was routine, but every few months he got hold of something satisfyingly meaty. He and Father Brown took plenty of interest in more serious local events, too, and although Sullivan didn’t get paid for those cases he appreciated that they helped keep him sharp. Administering the Kembleford cricket team – he couldn’t play anymore, not with his knee like it was, but someone had to do the back-end tasks – gave him recreation. It was a good life, one that made all the pain of the past worth having suffered through.

Especially on mornings like this one, when he had nothing more pressing to do than to watch the man he loved and be quietly grateful for his forgiveness. He didn’t realize how sunk into his own thoughts he’d become until Sid’s voice broke through them. “Oi, gorgeous. How long’ve you been standing there?”

Sullivan glanced into the sunlit pan. “Long enough for you to finish cooking breakfast, apparently.” He pushed himself away from the wall, taking his weight gingerly back onto his bad leg. “It smells good.”

“Yeah.” Sid was frowning at him. “Stiff this morning?”

“It’s fine. It will loosen up as I use it. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know.” The radio had been putting out advertisements for the past several minutes, but now it switched back to music. Hearing the first few chords of the next song, Sid's frown morphed into a grin. He moved their breakfast away from the heat, then extended both hands towards Sullivan. “C’mon. Let’s give it a little help.”

“Sid-” Actually, it was a bit more sore than usual this morning. Last night’s acrobatics must have tweaked it. He just hadn’t wanted to say as much.

“Please?” A mock-pout began to form on his lips. “My favorite song comes on the radio on Valentine’s Day morning, and you won’t dance with me?”

Sighing, Sullivan closed the distance between them and let himself be folded into Sid’s arms. “How,” he teased as they began to turn in place very slowly and out of step, “could I have fallen for a man whose favorite song is ‘Love Me Do’?”

“Oh, well, you’ve always had good taste,” Sid smirked against his scalp. “Almost as good as mine.”

“Mm...” The new fabric beneath Sullivan’s cheek was already suffused with Sid’s heat and smell. It would, if the salesperson who’d helped him was correct, keep the wearer warm on even the chilliest and rainiest of days, no matter what they were outside doing. Sullivan nuzzled into it. “You _are_ quite tasty, it’s true.”

“Ooh, someone’s feeling naughty. That kind of language at this hour, coming from you?” Sid’s loose grasp tightened. “Gonna be a perfect Valentine’s Day, at this rate.”

“Every day is a perfect day, with you.”

_“And_ sentimental! You feelin’ alright?”

“Shut up,” Sullivan chuckled. “I can’t hear the music.”

They swayed through the end of the song and into the next. Its tempo was as wildly off from their pace as the Beatles’ had been, but neither of them cared. They were too busy dancing to one another’s rhythm to notice what was being suggested by the radio.

“...Breakfast’ll get cold,” Sid murmured eventually.

As much as he hated to let this moment end, Sullivan _was_ hungry. “I’ll get the plates.”

“Ta, love.”

The space that Sullivan used as a study had originally been the dining room. Sid had solved the need for a different place to sit and eat by building an L-shaped bench into the kitchen’s sole empty corner. This allowed the small nook to manage four diners easily, or five at a pinch if they brought in Sullivan’s desk chair. And it had another advantage besides giving them the ability to squeeze the entire family in for a meal. “Here,” Sid said, patting the corner beside him. “You’re still limping. Let’s prop it up.”

Sullivan’s knee was looser after their dance, but there was still some catch to it. It was difficult to slide into the middle – he generally preferred to take whichever chair was opposite from the end of the bench where Sid was perched – but the reward was ample. Once there, he could lean back and lift his bad leg up to lay over Sid’s thighs. There was something about that exact angle that temporarily released every last bit of tightness from the damaged joint. As muscle and tendon relaxed, Sullivan groaned and closed his eyes.

“...We shouldn’t have done what we did last night, should we’ve?”

Sid’s voice was regretful. Sullivan popped one eye open and studied him. “We had no way of knowing how it would react.”

“I know, but even before I suggested it I thought it might not be good for you. I just figured you’d say if it was too much, and we could stop.”

“I _would_ have said if it was too much, Sid. But it wasn’t. And while it might not have been good for my knee, it was _very_ good for the rest of me. So...” He found Sid’s bare foot under the table and covered it with his own, applying a bit of reassuring pressure with his toes. “...Stop beating yourself up about it and eat.”

They ate, comfortable with few words and the quiet classical music Sullivan had tuned the transistor to before sitting down. When he’d finished, Sid let out a long, contented sigh. His hands fell to Sullivan’s knee, pushed aside the silky material of his dressing gown, and began a light, careful massage. “...I love Sundays. Getting all day together like this.”

“It’s nice that Valentine’s Day fell on one this year.”

“Yeah.” Sid’s finger traced a scar. “Anything you want to do today?”

Sullivan picked up on a hesitant note in the question. “...What do _you_ want to do today?” he countered.

“Well...I’d kind of like to hear the Father’s homily. You know how poetic he gets when he’s got an excuse to talk about love. And he’s been working on today’s for a couple of weeks now. He’s excited about it. But it’s alright if you think it’d be too much,” he added. “It’s not like I’ve never heard him on the topic before.”

Sid had a peculiar approach to churches. He was perfectly comfortable in and around them when there were no services going on, but he preferred not to be in attendance when rites were carried out. During his time as Lady Felicia’s chauffeur, he’d often slipped around to the back of St. Mary's to have a cigarette while he waited for her to come out of Mass. This was how he’d discovered that there was a ventilation grate behind the altar that funneled Father Brown’s voice outside with the same clarity that the first row of worshippers enjoyed. And as little as he cared for the standard fare of any religion, Sid liked listening to the Father’s earthy Sunday speeches.

“We can go,” Sullivan agreed. “It looks like it’s nice out today.” He reached over and fingered the sleeve of Sid’s new shirt. “You might be hot in this.”

“‘M wearing it anyway.” He rubbed Sullivan’s knee in silence for a long moment. “You’re sure you’ll be alright loafing around outside that long? I can feel how locked up it is this morning. And even if it’s warm out, it’s still only February warm.”

The cold did tend to worsen things, but Sullivan shook his head. “It will be a good opportunity to try out _my_ Valentine’s Day gift,” he reminded.

Never the sort of person who would just shrug off being caught out in a rainstorm, Sullivan had lately taken to carrying an umbrella almost as often as Father Brown did. His gift had been a new one, but with a clever modification. Sid had made a three-legged stool of yew and canvas, then contrived to fit it so that it could be closed around the umbrella’s shaft. The legs of the stool were cut and rounded to let them come together into a smooth, almost seamless grip, with the seat folded neatly up inside. A simple strap at the bottom and three small locking clips at the top secured the whole thing to and around the umbrella itself.

In short, Sullivan now had access to an easy-to-deploy chair anywhere he happened to take his umbrella. The umbrella was still perfectly usable when the seat was off, too, though it wasn’t nearly as handsome without its unique handle. It was a gorgeous and brilliant gift, and Sullivan had frankly been looking for a reason to try it out today. Lounging under the vent at the back of St. Mary’s with Sid leaning against the wall next to him and Father Brown’s homily on love and acceptance filling his ears would be a perfect first usage.

“Besides,” he added when Sid still looked hesitant, “if it starts to seize up I can always go to the office and wait for you there.” He could even lay down if he felt the need, because he’d been careful to select a workspace with a small flat upstairs. Kitted out as if someone lived in it full-time, it provided them with an easy alibi in case the wrong person came sniffing around their relationship. Sullivan slept there on occasion when he’d worked very late or had to be in the village early the next day, further bolstering their defenses. If anyone noticed that his lights came on and went off at the same time every other night, no one commented.

“That’s true. Then we’ve got Sunday lunch to go to.” They didn’t always spend Sunday afternoons at the presbytery, but they never missed a holiday. “Lady F.’ll probably stick around for that, too. She was talking about doing a tea today, but I never heard anything else about it.”

“And she would have invited us,” Sullivan nodded. The Countess had been generous with social invitations when Sid had merely been her chauffeur. Now that he was her estate manager, she never failed to include him in her mixed-gender functions. “Then what? Back here for the evening?”

“Yeah. Little music, little fireplace, little tipple...bit of cuddling...” His hand left Sullivan’s knee and began to slide up his thigh. “Bit of something else...”

“We don’t have time for that now if we’re going to hear the homily. I still have to get dressed.”

Sid’s hand retreated. “You’re right. Save it for later, then.” He leaned over for a kiss, then lowered Sullivan’s leg carefully back to the floor. “...Alright?”

“It’s much better than it was.” The tightness inside the joint had returned as soon as Sid moved it, but at least it was now down to its ordinary, everyday level. “Thank you.”

“What else am I here for?” Sid grinned, then stood up. “You get dressed, and I’ll clean up.”

Sullivan paused in the act of sliding towards the end of the bench. He was usually the one who did the breakfast dishes on Sundays, since Sid always cooked. “I can do that when we get back.”

Sid’s grin turned into a pleased smirk. “I’ve been a terrible influence on you these past two years.” He shook his head. “Leaving the washing up until this evening. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“I,” Sullivan stated as he took his partner’s proffered hand and let himself be pulled to his feet, “am the man who wasn’t going to point out that your ‘perfect Valentine’s Day’ is basically just one of our standard Sundays, but with presents.”

“Sure,” Sid shrugged, “but it’s like you said earlier, innit? Every day is a perfect day, with you. Valentine’s Day is just an excuse to be a little sappier about it than usual.”

He’d take whatever excuse he could get, Sullivan thought as he initiated another kiss, if it let him remind the man in his arms just how incredibly, impossibly much he loved him.


End file.
